More Complicated
by Vilinye
Summary: Drabbles for the Nineth Doctor. Now updated!
1. Emergency Protocol One

Emergency Protocol One

He waited until he was sure she was asleep. The Doctor had never done this before—before the Time War he was too young and brash to imagine the consequences of failure. He pressed a few buttons on the console and began speaking.

"This is Emergency Program 1. Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message has activated, then it can only mean one thing: we must be in danger, and I mean fatal." She was in danger every moment she spent with him, after all.

"I'm dead, or about to die any second with no chance of escape. And that's okay, I hope it's a good death." Life was such a fragile thing, even for Time Lords. Any foe that required this activation would be capable of killing him permanently. And if he somehow survived—memories of the trauma surrounding his sixth regeneration hardened his resolve. He couldn't risk that happening again.

"But I promised to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. The TARDIS is taking you home." She wouldn't take that easily—he knew that already. Might as well address that in advance. "And I bet you're fussing and moaning now. Typical. But hold on and just listen a bit more. The TARDIS can never return for me. Emergency Program 1 means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine. So this is what you should do. Let the TARDIS die. Just let this old box gather dust."

Through his mental link, he could feel it shudder. _Do you want to explore time and space piloted by a lot of stupid apes?_ he asked it before continuing. "No one can open it, no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years the world will move on, and the box will be buried."

Maybe she'd never see this. Maybe she'd just leave someday. They all did, eventually. But if it was ever activated— "And if you want to remember me, you can do one thing. That's all, one thing." He breathed into the TARDIS, releasing a physic echo; just enough of his life to give a real goodbye. "Have a good life. Do that for me Rose. Have a fantastic life."


	2. More Complicated

More Complicated

"You did it; you're a hero," Rose laughed. "Where next?"

He shut the door."A hero?"

_Me, a hero? She doesn't know who I am. What I've done. If I took her to the edge of the Time Lock…if she met a Dalek…if she really knew me…_

_She'd be terrified of me._

_She'd reject me._

_She'd run away in terror._

_I can't let her know. She's the only one standing between me and the darkness. I'll let her keep believing the lie. Let her think I'm a hero._

_Because maybe, just maybe, if she keeps believing it…_

_It will become true._

***Author's Note

This story came from a dream I had featuring the Ninth Doctor. I called him a good guy, but he said "Are you sure? I've done terrible things." The title is from a trailer for "Off the Map," where someone says "I'm not a hero. It's way more complicated than that."


	3. Falling

"We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world."

He doesn't remember the first time he fell. He's fallen so many times since, mentally and morally, that the physical falls are the least frightening ones. Yet all have a certain sameness.

Most falls start with confidence. He's noticed this—little kids slip on the ice; older people shuffle along cautiously. Then, in one instant, it changes.

The ground moves; the foot missteps. Terror, poised over an endless abysses, even when the floor's merely meters below. Maybe the stupid apes do have time sense. That feeling of panic—inflated, magnified and exaggerated—is the tiniest taste of the Untempered Schism.


	4. Tense Trouble

Humans use the past tense when speaking of the dead. Oh, sure, they stumble with it a few times, especially in the beginning, but it becomes second nature. I don't see it that way. I'm a friend of Churchhill and have a dinner appointment with Henry VIII (Note: must keep it while in the same face.)

Time travel messes up tenses. English ones, at least. Gallifreyan has whole categories of tenses for time travel, even pronoun conjugations for regenerations. But that's impossible to convey in Earth languages.

Time Lords, for all their knowledge and skills, never master the past tense.


	5. To Die For

"It's to die for…" Humans say that all the time. About cake, about love, about movies.

He hears in in an entirely different way. For a Time Lord, there are many things to die for: the universe, the galaxy, the planet, the species…one's friends. There is always someone who needs saving. He couldn't do anything to save his own people.

Humans have things backwards—all the things they claim are "to die for" for are really to reasons to live. Rubbish reasons, but what else can one expect from a lot of rubbish apes?

Maybe it's best that he doesn't have anyone else. That way, if he falls, their faces don't haunt his nightmares. There are so many things worth dying for, after all.

Worth living for? That would just complicate things.


End file.
